


Claustrophobia

by Ofb23



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:41:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25377823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ofb23/pseuds/Ofb23
Summary: One of the musketeers is in peril, the others on a race to find him
Comments: 6
Kudos: 52





	Claustrophobia

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything for a long time, so this is short and somewhat rusty but just needed to start somewhere. If anyone wants to take the premise and run with a larger story, go for it, just please let me know!  
> Not betaed, so all mistakes my own. Hope you enjoy it, reviews always welcomed!

D’Artagnan awoke to an all-consuming darkness. It pressed down on him from above, from the sides, relentless black unbroken by even a pinprick of light.

His head felt groggy, and he wondered if he had gone blind. The thought consumed him for some time, looking side to side to see if there was any change in the degree of darkness. He wondered if he should panic, but his thoughts were sluggish, unable to follow through long enough even to register the feel of silk under his head as he succumbed to unconsciousness once again.

The second time he awoke because of an all familiar smell. Heavy coppery blood, the acrid stench of urine: death seemed to fill his nostrils and he wondered who had died. If only he could see. He reached out blindly, his hand registering the softness of silk before hitting the rough edge of wood. Too tired to try and work out where he was, his let his unseeing eyes fall closed again. At least he thought he did. His hand continued to stroke, the rough wood a harsh contrast to the silk he was lying on. He tried with his other hand as well, found the same pattern. He tried turning his head, finally registering the feel of silk under his head as well.

The thought that he was lying in a coffin made him laugh slightly. But something of the unconscious thought took hold in his slowly awakening brain and he sat up.

At least he tried. His head collided with a lid of some sort almost straight away, and pain spiked quick and ferocious through his head.

He was in a coffin.

He couldn’t breathe. His lungs started trying to pull in air that suddenly seemed weighted with blood, and dirt, and wood and silk, pressing down on him from all sides. The smell of blood filled his nostrils and he dry heaved, his guts twisting painfully till he wondered if he would suffer the indignity of loosened bowels as well as his empty bladder. His rational brain tried to point out that as he was buried alive, there was no one likely to know about it but even as a hysterical bubble of laughter tried to surface alongside the utter helplessness at his situation a sudden rage took over.

He pounded the sides of the coffin, and when that didn’t help, he pounded the lid of it instead. His arms tired quickly, a lethargy settling deep in his muscles and he tried to kick instead, telling himself to not give up, to keep fighting the enemy of wood and silk. He tried clawing at the rough hewn wood, trying desperately to dig out of the coffin that surrounded him on all sides. His fingers throbbed, his feet ached and still he was utterly trapped, the darkness and the smell of death, his death, pressing in on all sides.

A mighty sob heaved from him as his arms and legs fell useless and silent at his side. He had too much left to do, too much left to accomplish before he died. He hadn’t yet mastered the sword like Athos. He couldn’t shoot like Aramis. He couldn’t fight like Porthos. He wanted to see Constance one last time. He wanted to tell her…his heart thumped as he thought of her beauty, as he thought with a sudden longing about never being able to see or touch or hear her again. At never being able to tell her that he loved her.

And there was more. He had an apology to make to Athos. How could he die from his own stupidity and not apologise for being an idiot? And he had a bet to win with Porthos and Aramis. He had known that the undertaker was up to something more than just burying bodies.

And yet it all seemed so irrelevant now. Except it meant everything now. He was being buried alive, and now he knew the fate of the missing men and he couldn’t tell anyone because…because he was going to be one of them. He was going to be just another of the missing.

A second sob heaved out, making him angry. Why was he crying about it? What good did crying do? His lungs heaved faster, trying to pull air in from a rapidly emptying supply as panic tried to take a hold. He remembered his father’s voice, his gentle tone telling the young d’Artagnan as he tended to another skinned knee that big boys didn’t cry.

He couldn’t cry, he had to be calm now. Crying wouldn’t solve anything and would steal air from the diminishing supply. A new resolve settled over him as he purposefully stopped fighting, as he made himself lie still, made his lungs calm their desperate bid for air. He stopped thinking of the injustice. Stopped thinking of all he should and shouldn‘t have done.

A song came to him, the notes of a lullaby his mum had used to sing to him. He hummed the tune to himself softly, the noise echoing in the enclosed space. He tried to remember the words but found he couldn’t recall them. He tried to remember his mother’s face and found the image blurry at best. A lone tear tracked down the side of his face as he tried to remember what his mother had looked like. The image wouldn’t coalesce though, wouldn’t come into focus however hard he tried. Would he get to see her face again, he wondered as he lay there, humming her tune? Would he recognise her if he did? What if the priests were right? What if he was descended into hell rather than heaven? He had committed some grievous sins. He hadn’t been to church; he hadn’t been to confession since…he could scarcely remember when. Christmas last, maybe? Should he be scared of ending in hell, he wondered? But the fear of hell was distant to the fear of the all-pervading darkness around him.

Maybe this was hell? Maybe the darkness, and the smell of death all around was his for eternity. He slammed his hands into the sides again, desperation flooding energy once again into lethargic muscles. He didn’t want to forever be here, surrounded in darkness.

The energy left him as soon as it had come, robbed by the diminishing air. Silence fell all around. His arms didn’t want to move anymore. His legs were cramped and unbending. The silence pressed as heavily as the blackness and he fought to remember the lullaby again but even that sound wouldn’t come now, that memory had left him also. He was alone, in the darkness and in the silent and he did the only thing he could, he screamed.

***

Athos kept his mind purposefully blank. He concentrated on the rush of wind in his face; the cold stinging his eyes the only reason for the wetness of tears on his cheeks. He concentrated on the bunching and releasing of his mare’s legs as she pushed as hard as her master was prompting through the cold spring night.

All around them Paris was a slumber. The hour before dawn, the darkest hour of the night and the streets were empty, the mare’s hooves harshly grating in the empty street. Grey and indistinct houses gave way to grey and indistinct warehouses, as the harsh sewer smell rose up from the Seine somewhere in front of them.

Behind him, Athos knew Aramis and Porthos were pushing their rides just as hard, he could hear their clatter of hooves even when he couldn’t turn to check their progress. He didn’t need to. Time was running out on them, and their desperate charge felt like nothing but helplessness.

Athos had no time for recriminations, and yet time seemed to crawl at that moment and all he could think of was those recriminations. He shouldn’t have ignored d’Artagnan. It seemed like such a small thing, and so long ago. D’Artagnan had just voiced a thought. A feeling, he had admitted. That the undertaker, one of the first people they had interviewed in their investigation of missing men, was wrong somehow. Initially d’Artagnan had been easily dissuaded, Athos the loudest as he pushed to go and interview another of their leads instead. But something had tugged at d’Artagnan, and reason, and logic and persuasion could not keep him from looking harder at the undertaker.

How wrong they had all been, and how right d’Artagnan had had it all along. If only they had gone with d’Artagnan’s gut those 3 days since, the current nightmare would have been avoided. Except there had been no proof, no reason beyond d’Artagnan’s illogical uneasiness. And that wasn’t enough to arrest an upstanding man of the community. Athos had ordered d’Artagnan away from his own stake out from the undertaker’s house. Had put him to task when he had continued to argue that there was something off about the man, something not right. Had not even listened as d’Artagnan had yelled at him in anger at being ignored and stormed off.

Twelve hours ago. Piecing together d’Artagnan’s movements when he hadn’t come home for the evening meal had been easy. Too easy. He had been seen at the undertaker’s place past evensong, where he’d been seen every day. And through the undertaker’s window they had seen for themselves the proof they had required, the undertaker clear as day settling d’Artagnan’s rapier in his locked cupboard along with the other items that had been reported missing with the men: a silver chalice, a ruby dagger among them.

The undertaker had seemed a kind man. A friendly man with a soft, understanding look, a sombre tone to his voice well suited to his vocation. He had smiled as they had threatened him, only tsked when Aramis had primed his gun. Pointing out in a deceptively calm, melodious voice that there was no way they would kill him, not if they wanted their young friend to survive. The madness had broken forth as he laughed in their faces at the thought of their friend, buried alive and time, and air, very much running out by now. The sheer delight as he detailed what he did had left Athos feeling sick with grief and disgust.

The time it had taken to negotiate with the mad man had made Athos want to claw away his own skin in frustration. But Aramis had eventually succeeded with soft talk and understanding, even as he had cold clocked the undertaker once they had a location, all three of them working in silent symmetry to tie him up. Ready and waiting to be executed at the hand of the king once they had found d’Artagnan.

Athos didn’t pause as they got to the gates of the cemetery, simple jumped the low wall to the right and kept going, forced to slow only as the headstones appeared in the dull light. The back end of the cemetery was ringed with trees as the undertaker described and Athos leaped from his horse even before she stopped moving, knowing that it would be quicker now by foot. The space behind the ring of trees seemed overly large, and a heavy weakness settled briefly on Athos, pressing him bodily to the earth as he stared around him helpless to know where to begin.

A shout from Aramis jolted him awake, shaking him from his momentary stupor. As he ran, he saw what Aramis had seen, the freshly dug earth darker and less compact that the earth around it. He was on his knees, desperation clawing at the earth without thought, Aramis and Porthos ringed around him. He didn’t register Porthos suddenly leaving, only registered he was back when a metal spade joined his and Aramis’s digging efforts.

How much time passed before the clang of metal on a more substantial article than the mud Athos would never know. It felt like an eternity, every second crawling past as long as an hour, every harsh gasp of breath, every sting of sweat in the eyes, every handful of earth taking too long, taking too much precious air.

And it felt like no time at all, incapable of being any time, Athos incapable of any thought beyond the single desperation to find d’Artagnan. The top of the coffin gleamed dully in the moonlight, and Athos felt a new surge of energy fill him, working in tandem with Aramis as Porthos displaced twice, three times as much mud with the spade to unearth the coffin. Then they all had their hands on the coffin lid, the sound of splintering wood filling the quiet cemetery as they hauled off the lid.

The first sight would become a lasting horror, a memory that would echo through a lifetime for all of them, though it lasted only a second. D’Artagnan lay in repose, eyes closed, grey and sallow in the moonlight, head cushioned on silk stained with blood. The copper smell of blood and the acrid smell of urine hit them as air rushed into the formerly enclosed space and they all thought they were too late, that d’Artagnan was dead. Until d’Artagnan’s eyes opened on a giant convulsion of fresh air.

For a moment there was only a mixture of limbs, a cacophony of sound as d’Artagnan surged upright, meaningless words, cries, sobs filling the air as he desperately tried to scrabble out from his tomb, as Athos and Aramis and Porthos pulled him with sheer relief out and away. It was all Athos could do to hold d’Artagnan tight then, to hold him tight, and to say over and over and over again ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ as d’Artagnan’s wretched sobs and desperate gasps filled the air as he held onto Athos for dear life.

Finally, d’Artagnan quietened to an occasional sob and Athos found that he could loosen his hold just a bit. ‘It was the undertaker.’ D’Artagnan mumbled. Before Athos could do more than share a look with Aramis who was crouched next to him, d’Artagnan carried on. ‘I’m sorry Athos, I shouldn’t have gone against you.’

‘No, d’Artagnan, I’m sorry,’ one glance up at Aramis, then Porthos and Athos adjusted his words, ‘we’re sorry, that we didn’t listen to you.’

It seemed to take some effort, but d’Artagnan lifted his head to regard Athos solemnly, before he looked left and right at Aramis and Porthos. ‘I won the bet.’ He said, and he managed a genuine, if small grin, drawing a relieved laugh from Porthos, and an answering smile from Aramis.

‘We’ll give you that one, pup.’ Porthos told him, his big hand coming down to rest gently on d’Artagnan’s head. ‘We’ll give you that one.’

Awareness growing, d’Artagnan looked around him. ‘Where are we?’

‘St Saviour’s cemetery’ Aramis answered. ‘All the bodies are buried here.’ He added quietly.

Athos still had his arms around d’Artagnan, felt him shudder. ‘He was mad.’ D’Artagnan muttered.

‘Stark raving.’ Porthos agreed, shoving to his feet with the aid of the shovel handle. ‘He kept the treasures as you guessed.’ Porthos added, as he brushed earth from his trousers.

‘It’s how we knew he had you.’ Aramis said quietly, brushing back d’Artagnan’s sweat and blood-soaked hair to reveal a nasty cut on his forehead. ‘We need to get you back to the garrison, tend to this.’

D’Artagnan reached up to feel also, but found his hand battered away by Aramis. ‘No touching. It’s not bleeding now, but it won’t take much to start again.’

‘I smelt it.’ D’Artagnan said in a quiet voice, he looked down at his sodden clothes. ‘Smelt death.’ Even with just the light of the moon, the blush of embarrassment brought welcome colour to his cheeks.

‘But you are very much alive.’ Aramis reminded him, pulling his thoughts away. ‘Once you are clean and in new clothes you will feel much revived, I think.’ He looked up and with silent communication Porthos went looking for their abandoned steads.

Athos watched Porthos go but looked down at d’Artagnan again when he felt a shudder of movement. D’Artagnan’s attention was on the grave. ‘I don’t remember what she looked like.’

Alarmed Athos looked up at Aramis. ‘Who don’t you remember?’ He asked carefully.

‘My mother. I remembered the lullaby, but I can’t remember her face.’

‘You were just a small boy when she passed, d’Artagnan.’ Aramis said carefully.

‘I wondered if I would see her again.’ D’Artagnan said, not seeming to hear Aramis. ‘But I think I am destined for hell.’

Uncomfortable with the morbid turn of the conversation, Athos drew d’Artagnan back to hold him where he could see him properly. Dark eyes met his, sweat and old tears making muddy tracks through the dirt on d’Artagnan’s face. Fear, a desperate fear that Athos could understand held his look. ‘D’Artagnan you are alive, and when you do finally pass from this world to the next, you will be reunited with your family. But that day is not now, and not soon. God has greater plans for you yet. I have greater plans for you yet.’

Aramis startled slightly at Athos’s acknowledgement of a higher being, but stayed quiet lest he broke the smell.

‘I want to best you at swords.’ D’Artagnan whispered, drawing a smile and a lightening of features from Athos.

‘Do you now?’

‘And learn to shoot better from Aramis.’ D’Artagnan said.

‘You don’t want to beat him?’ Athos asked, amused.

‘Never likely to happen.’ D’Artagnan muttered. ‘But I want to be better. And learn to fight better.’

‘And beat Porthos in hand to hand?’ Athos asked as Porthos came through the clearing, leading their three mounts.

‘Never going to happen.’ Porthos voice drew a smile from d’Artagnan.

‘Well, you have much and more to learn young d’Artagnan.’ Aramis said, standing and holding out his hand to pull Athos up. ‘And tomorrow is another day.’ He added as he and Athos hauled d’Artagnan up on unsteady legs.

‘Today tomorrow, or tomorrow, tomorrow?’ Porthos asked, looking over at the eastern sky and the first hints of dawn.

D’Artagnan looked confused at the words before yawning mightily. Aramis drew him to his side with a laugh, a shoulder to lean on as they walked to the horses. ‘Today we sleep. Tomorrow will be soon enough I think.’


End file.
